[punctilio]

Actually, plagiarism and copyright infringement are different things. For example, it is possible to plagiarize something that is not copyrighted, and many forms of copyright infringement wouldn't fit the definition of plagiarism.

[jolux]

True, but the parent seems to think they wouldn't have been plagiarizing if they had "paraphrased" the declaring code so to speak, which makes the relationship here explicit. If they had paraphrased the declaring code, it would have been much harder to say they were infringing on copyright, but instead, they copied it verbatim.

Of course, in academia paraphrasing is still plagiarism, but it is likely no longer copyright infringement especially in this case.

[wycx]

> Of course, in academia paraphrasing is still plagiarism, but it is likely no longer copyright infringement especially in this case.

That seems an odd thing to say. A significant portion of academic writing is paraphrasing, with attribution. What is a review article, other than attributed paraphrasing?

[jolux]

With attribution, definitely ok, but some think paraphrasing is enough to make it wholly new. Hell, you can quote verbatim if you attribute.